WWII Journal: Longtime Natick man helped shoot down German planes

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Jul 27, 2014 at 9:26 PMJul 27, 2014 at 9:26 PM

By Brad PetrishenDaily News Staff

"A German prisoner took this photo," Arthur Fishtine said, his right hand shaking as he held the black-and-white photo of the handsome young American soldier."I wasn’t yet 21," the longtime Natick man said, staring back into his own brown eyes, 70 years later. "Still so young."Fishtine’s 90-year-old frame has been through a lot since the picture was taken. He beat advanced stage prostate cancer back in the 1990s. He’s had many "scrapes," as he puts them. At 88, he was hit by a car.But his mind is still razor sharp. As he put his finger on a map of Europe, tracing with ease the miles in France that were won with such sacrifice in 1944, the memories flow as easily as water."We were disappointed at first we weren’t included in the invasion," said Fishtine, whose 79th Infantry Division landed on Utah Beach a week after D-Day. "We were young kids, we were gung ho."We thought, ‘It’s nothing. We’ll just go over there and beat the Germans.’ But it wasn’t that easy."The Dorchester native was "drafted" into the Army at 18, two weeks after he quit his job welding ships for the Navy because he learned it would make him exempt."Everybody was going in, and I didn’t want to remain home," Fishtine explained, pausing to smile. "I wanted to wear the uniform to impress all the girls."Fishtine was sent to California for training, recalling vividly how the camp, surrounded by fruit orchards, "smelled like perfume all the time."But one day, a 40-millimeter gun ran over both his legs during an accident. He was laid up in the hospital with the possibility of discharge."I didn’t want to leave my buddies I had been with," Fishtine said, remembering how he cried on the phone to his sergeant. "It would have been a disgrace going home."The sergeant got him out of the hospital, and a determined Fishtine limped around until he recovered.In June 1944, Fishtine found himself in the English Channel aboard an LST (Landing Ship, Tank), the same kind of craft he’d worked on at the Navy yard."I was sweating it out, because I did the welding," he said, laughing. "Well, we made it."Fishtine’s first taste of combat could have been his last. The night he landed on Utah Beach, as his company truck crept along in total darkness, an American soldier in a foxhole kindly informed him they were headed straight for German lines."Evidently we’d gone down the wrong road," Fishtine said, remembering how the Germans caught on and "all hell broke loose.""We had never before in our lives heard incoming shells," he said. "It was a rude awakening.’Fishtine served in a 15-man anti-aircraft outfit that ground its way across France and into Germany. Equipped with a two-and-half-ton truck that hauled a 40-millimeter gun and four quad-mounted .50-caliber machine guns, its job was to protect the infantry from German warplanes.After they crossed the Seine River, the German Luftwaffe "came in like a swarm of bees," Fishtine said, with one plane aiming directly at his truck."I thought we were goners," he said. "Fortunately the bullets were going over our heads."Fishtine and his comrades scored a direct hit on the plane, which crashed only about 25 yards away."We had to get off the guns, because shrapnel was flying all over the place," he said.Fishtine’s unit was credited with taking down four planes in all. He crossed the Rhine River in a small boat with German shells raining down around it.In Germany, Fishtine, a Jew, was shocked when he came across survivors of concentration camps being tended to by a chaplain in the town of Bayreuth."When they heard I was Jewish, they came up to me and cried, they were all over me. I was crying myself," he said. "Being not even 21, it was hard to believe all of that, as a young boy."What do you know, how serious life is? You don’t."When Fishtine got back home, he didn’t let opportunities pass him by. On his first day starting college under the GI Bill, he turned around to the pretty girl behind him, copied her phone number down from the paperwork in front of her and told her he’d be calling."She said, ‘Don’t bother, I’m going steady,’" he said, pausing to share a smile with that same girl, Charlotte, sitting next to him. "I worked on her," he said as he looked at his bride of 64 years.Fishtine has some difficult war memories, like the day he lost a good friend to mistaken friendly aircraft fire and nearly died himself. But he has good memories, too, like the time he sneaked into the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Reims, which he had once carved out of soap as a boy."When I was 7 or 8, I remember the Civil War guys would dress in their blue uniforms and get in their horse and carriage on Memorial Day," he reflected. "That’s how far back I go."In the twilight of a life spent in graphic and architectural design, the longtime Framingham Jewish War Veterans commander said one thing he’ll never forget is the reception his outfit got as it sailed home to New York."That was the first time I felt I had survived," he said, recalling the fire trucks tooting and the people lining the harbor cheering. "I don’t think there was a dry eye as we sailed past the Statue of Liberty."Brad Petrishen can be reached at 508-490-7463 or bpetrishen@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @BPetrishen_MWDN.

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